


Heavenfaced

by Ukki



Category: Inazuma Eleven
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mentions of Suicide Ideation, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24538549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ukki/pseuds/Ukki
Summary: The second religious crisis of his life creeps up on him like a snake slithering into the lunch basket of a distracted picnic-goer.He wakes up one night blinking away after-images of Shirou Fubuki standing in the rose-tinted sunset.
Relationships: Afuro Terumi | Aphrodi/Fubuki Shirou
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	Heavenfaced

Terumi wears a cross around his neck, silver pendant resting daintily between his collarbones. He hangs onto it when the going gets tough.

The first religious crisis of his life hits him like a freight train the day they lose the Football Frontier finals. Kneeling on the ground as Raimon snatches the lead from them, he becomes aware of two things.

The first, that their field has actual grass, crushed blades bleeding green on the palms of his hands.

The second, that a sword of Damocles has started its slow pendulum rocking above his neck.

The smell of grass is a distress signal. Plant life rooted deep in the frozen black earth wailing its chemical cry with nowhere to run and no eyes to see the last sun glistening off the blade of the incoming lawnmower.

He curls up on himself and begs for forgiveness.

The sword rocks away. It bides its time.

And overnight, it drops. Self-professed aliens notwithstanding, he finds pictures of Kageyama sneering back at him from the front page of every sports journal he bothers to check. The cut is clean, punctuated by a gaping blossom of arterial spray. His severed head lands heavenfaced.

He spends the afternoon sobbing in a confessional booth -- the priest’s soft soothing voice calling him ‘son’ only makes him feel worse about himself -- and then kneeling on the church’s floor, clawing his cross in a white-knuckled grip and choking on a stream of prayers so that God may love him again.

***

The second religious crisis of his life creeps up on him like a snake slithering into the lunch basket of a distracted picnic-goer.

He wakes up one night blinking away after-images of Shirou Fubuki standing in the rose-tinted sunset. The sword cuts auburn parables in the dying light.

His alarm clock marks twenty past three -- the shadows in the far corners have already started arranging themselves into a cackle of waiting monsters. He reaches for his phone, charging quietly on the bedside table (his brain shudders in terrified relief when clawed hands fail to reach out of the darkness to grab his wrist) and thumbs through his Favourites until he finds Tadashi’s contact.

Tadashi picks up after ten rings. “This better be good,” he says, in the tone of something that had been dead for a few millennia and had only just started to get the hang of it.

Terumi starts to answer, and his voice gives out.

“Terumi?”

“I think I like boys,” Terumi whispers, childishly, and then it’s real.

Tadashi doesn’t comfort him. Comforting doesn’t quite make it amongst the several sundry things that found their way up Tadashi’s six-lane highway of an alley. “Don’t tell your priest,” he instructs, all clipping practicality.

Terumi lets out a noise like (weeping and gnashing of teeth) a wounded bird of prey. “I _need_ to tell him. He might still be able to fix…” This. Me. Everything.

“What you do _not_ need,” Tadashi insists, “is some adult telling you that the way you feel is a sin, or you’ll burn in hell or whatever holier-than-thou bullshit they’re trying to sell you.”

Terumi winces. He wants to make clear his position on gratuitous badmouthing of the clergy, but his heart sinks when he pictures the priest’s soothing voice turning stern with reproach.

“What do I do next time I confess, though?” he pleads, “If I don’t tell him that’s like lying.”

Tadashi breathes sharply on the other side. “There’s nothing to tell. It’s not a sin you need to atone for. Do you feel the need to let him know every time you wear mixed fabrics? You better give me three Hail Mary’s for that, lest the sky monster smite you…”

“Tadashi,” Terumi says.

“Sorry,” sighs Tadashi piously. “Scratch the sky monster. What I _meant_ is that some of that stuff is bollocks. And you know it.”

Terumi sniffles. “It’s not the same, though.”

“It’s not the same because people think they have a right to make you feel like shit for one but not the other.” Tadashi is so kind. Terumi wants to cry on his shoulder.

***

He bumps into Fubuki while wrestling his cart down the grocery store’s frozen foods isle. The irony does not escape him. He does his best to ignore how for the last couple of years the bedrock of his emotional stability has been the assumption that Fubuki should be living several hundreds of miles away. Ancient survival instincts come alive and start gently urging him to run for shelter.

Fubuki beams at him. He looks great, Terumi realises as his stomach lodges itself in his throat, grown from endearing to quaintly attractive. Puberty has sprinkled his face with smatterings of acne on his forehead and across the bridge of his nose, but he wears steel ear gouges and carries himself like a man who never had to wrestle his dead sibling for the control of his own mind -- a shadow of the old trauma only present in the the subtle way he winces as an announcement is croaked over the store’s loudspeakers. Mental stability fits him like a well-tailored suit and Terumi aches.

“Aphrodi!” Fubuki says, his voice silk-deep. Terumi doesn’t even mind the resurrection of his old nickname -- he still can’t believe all of Japan went along with it for as long as they did. “It’s so _good_ to see you! How’ve you been? You’re looking fine.” Fubuki’s eyes scan him up and down with quiet purpose -- Terumi hates how relieved he is that he decided to put on a nice shirt.

“Fubuki. Hi. I’ve been fine,” he says lamely. “What brings you to the mainland?”

“Old team get-together. We’ve been planning it for _months_. It was bloody impossible to find a week that worked for everyone. I’m crashing at Gouenji’s. He’s giving me a couch so I figured I should at least take care of the groceries.” He gestures critically to the assorted greens in his cart. “Wish he weren’t such a health nut though. I’ll kill him if he makes me steam one more vegetable.”

Terumi remembers Gouenji. There’s the obvious reason, what with the guy being universally acclaimed as the rising starlet of Japanese soccer and getting scouting proposals from all of Asia and beyond. And then there’s the fact that even at 13 Gouenji managed to be handsome. He’s warm skin and dark eyes crowned by fair eyelashes, and Terumi can’t help sucking on the sour candy of jealousy that sits under his tongue.

“Oh, how’s Gouenji?” he asks, aiming for casual and missing by half a mile.

Fubuki is courteous enough no to take notice. “The absolute nerd just came back from a term in Germany,” he says fondly. “I don’t think his girlfriend is too fond of me, though. I may have, err, ruined a couple of moments for them.” He flashes Terumi a Cheshire grin and adds, “I’m going back to Hokkaido on Monday. If you’re free this weekend I thought we might hang out?”

His tone stays friendly, unassuming. It’s the way his sunburnt cheekbones re-alight that gives him away.

“I thought you wanted to see the guys from Raimon?” Terumi attempts as a last, half-hearted line of defence.

Fubuki holds his gaze as one holds hands with a toddler who just tried to walk into traffic. “Huh-uh. Last time I checked you did wear that uniform too, for a while.” He pauses and adds, with sweet finality, “Lucky me.”

And Terumi has no trouble believing that this is someone who used to take down brown bears with a soccer ball.

He hardly hears himself answer, “See you on Saturday, then?” over the thumping of his heart flooring it into maximum overdrive.

Fubuki’s eyes crinkle happily. Terumi thinks back of the child standing in the dusty hospital yard, his scarf blowing in the wind. It looks like smiling takes him less effort now.

***

The sun is garish on Saturday, dulling the world under a trembling coat of whitewash. Fubuki wears round, dark sunglasses and his skin glints with a sheen of sunscreen as he moves. The smell reminds Terumi of crashing waves and gentle chirping nights.

“My dermatologist said she’ll have my head if she has to see me again for a bad sunburn,” Fubuki announces cheerily, dabbing at his pink skin.

His posture is relaxed as he strolls close enough that the hairs on Terumi’s arm stand on end with every nonchalant brush. Terumi’s muscle spindles unionise to inform him of just _how little_ movement it would take to hold Fubuki’s hand. Maybe later he’ll manage to fool himself into thinking he had the courage to act on it. Conjure a wishful illusion of muscle memory.

People push past them. Do they see them, do they wonder, will they tell his priest? But God already _knows_.

“Do you want to go somewhere indoors?” he asks. The light catches on Fubuki’s hair in a halo of burnt silver.

Fubuki grins and shakes his head. “Hell _no._ I have to make the most of mainland spring. Stock up on that vitamin D, you know? The cherry blossoms still haven’t bloomed back at home. It’s _so_ cold.”

“I’ve never been to Hokkaido,” Terumi offers clumsily.

Fubuki hums. “I can put you up if you want to come visit sometime. Maybe in the winter? Then we could go skiing. You look like you’d make a neat figure-skater.”

“I tried out a rink they opened in town once. My tailbone still hurts when I sit on it weird.”

It’s awkward. Terumi shouldn’t care this much. But he considers this graceless, raw version of himself and wants to push it back into the furthest folds of his personality. He knows he’ll cringe at himself tonight when he reviews all the slip-ups and missed opportunities.

He wishes he could reciprocate Fubuki’s crisp advances without feeling God’s laparoscopic glare taking him apart from the inside out. His fingers reach up to trace the margins of his pendant -- he remembers Fubuki’s frantic hold on his brother’s scarf.

“Are you a Protestant?” Fubuki asks gently.

“Catholic,” Terumi replies, and it feels like a confession of guilt. Do you solemnly swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. “Are you, err, religious at all?”

Fubuki shrugs. “Not actively, no. My nan’s a Shintoist, but I’ve never exactly practised.”

“Oh. I see.”

And then a switch flips, and he realises -- he’s run out of air. It’s all escaping through a hole in the middle of the sky, and the world deflates with a screech that shatters against the plates of his skull, and then it spreads thin and for just a second it feels like he could scratch away the peeling layer of reality and uncover the mad shivering rows of atoms underneath.

When he blinks away the end times he finds himself trembling on a bench, looking down into Fubuki’s pale eyes.

“It’s okay,” Fubuki croons in his cotton-soft voice. “Breathe in and out with me. Like this, good. Now look around you, can you find three things you could eat?”

Terumi looks. A couple of benches down the road, a commuter is demolishing a rushed sandwich. A child walks by sucking on a lollipop. Little by little, his deranged nerve endings stop screaming at him. “Huh, I guess I _could_ eat a person if I were desperate enough,” he manages at last.

Fubuki snorts. Their knees knock together as he stands from his crouch and takes one step back, so considerate, face so smooth any disappointed twitch would go undetected.

“Sorry,” Terumi says.

“It’s okay. How’re you feeling? You scared me back there.”

Terumi wishes he weren’t so nice. It makes him want to bawl. His brain suggests he say that it’s fine and his vocal cords call a strike. He pats the space next to him on the bench and Fubuki plops down by his side, too many deliberate inches away. Terumi already misses the warmth.

“It’s not you,” he says. “It’s… hard to explain.”

Terumi turned out halfway decent, in spite of his parents’ views on good child-rearing practices. He remembers more modelling gigs than friends’ birthday parties. His parenthesis with Kageyama was less like tumbling out of the frying pan into the fire and more like being cornered by a sociopath wielding a butane torch.

He is vaguely aware he has had the kind of childhood most people expect to naturally progress into a heroin overdose.

Terumi wears a cross around his neck, the gaudy eye-strain of his persona drowning out the tasteful silver of the pendant. He hangs onto it like from a parent’s hand -- he isn’t ready to make God an empty-nester.

“I just,” he gestures helplessly upwards, “I just _can’t_. I’m _so sorry_.”

Fubuki follows his gaze heavenwards like he expects to have a staring match with the Almighty. The sunshine shatters into dark rainbows against the lenses of his sunglasses. “I don’t know how I feel about God,” he says at last, “But I think that’s okay. Cause whatever God is, they’ll just have to love me through it all. That’s what they’re for.”

Suddenly Terumi thinks he understands first-century Galileans. “How do you know?” he whispers, and half of him expects a parable.

Fubuki pauses. He takes off his sunglasses and folds them gently in his lap. “You ever read _The Elegance of the Hedgehog_? It’s a French novel about this 12-year-old kid who’s planning to kill herself with her mum’s sleeping pills. It’s pretty good, actually.

“Anyway, when my grandpa’s dementia got very bad my nan would give him a couple of tablets every night to get him to sleep. And I started nipping one every now and then, so she wouldn’t notice. I’d decided that when I had enough, I’d just go to sleep in the snow and that would be it.

“And then one day I did have enough. You know what happened then?”

“What?” Terumi breathes.

Fubuki’s smile breaks at the corners. “Raimon came to Hakuren. And I don’t know, maybe it was just a fluke. Pure dumb luck. But I _need_ to believe that there’s something out there that knows best and maybe they were trying to make it up to me.”

Terumi scans the folds of his neocortex for something to say. Not something brilliant. Not even appropriate. Sympathy is all he asks of himself. Fubuki cuts him short with the graceful lethality of a hot knife going through butter: “I’m not telling you so you’ll feel sorry for me,” he interjects delicately.

It feels like _deliverance_.

“It’s not supposed to be like this, is it?” Terumi says, as yearning mingles with mourning. “You doing all this work. I’m supposed to meet you halfway.”

Fubuki smiles -- helplessly, for the first time. “I _like_ you,” he states, like that’s not enough to steal Terumi’s breath from behind his teeth. Like he knows better than waiting for Terumi to say it back.

Terumi’s fingers struggle with the tiny clasp -- blunt nails losing their grip on the metal. His body tingles with the anticipation of pain and torn flesh. Arterial spray. All he gets is a cold spot where the chain used to be. So attuned to his skin it feels like he started growing around it. The pendant hangs from his fingers spinning a thread of light.

He presses it into Fubuki’s hand -- it warms up fast between their palms.

“I’ll come to Hokkaido,” he says, talking so fast he stumbles all over himself, “If you still want me. Soon. If it’s okay. I can’t ask you to wait for me.”

Fubuki’s fingers fold around the cross.

“Not to worry,” he says, “I think both of us will.”


End file.
